Extracting single crystal diffraction pattern from powder diffraction by intensity correlation functions

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to extract single crystal diffraction patterns from dilute powder diffraction data using intensity correlation functions, enabling improved 3D structure determination.

Contribution

The study introduces a novel application of angular correlation analysis to recover single crystal diffraction information from dilute powder samples.

Findings

Correlation converges to single crystal pattern with many crystals per shot.

Single crystal diffraction pattern can be reconstructed from powder data.

Potential for 3D reciprocal space retrieval in dilute powder diffraction.

Abstract

We applied the analysis of x-ray intensity angular correlation function to dilute ensembles of identical spinel crystals. Firstly, we show that the angular correlation from measured diffraction patterns with many crystals per shot converges to the correlation for single crystal. Secondly, we determined the diffraction pattern from single crystal from diffraction patterns of many crystals. Finally, we discussed the full 3D reciprocal space retrieval and its potential application in solving structure with dilute powder diffraction data, where the intensity fluctuation could be observed on each ring.